php mysql SET NAMES 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_unicode_ci' doesn't work with mysqli

Question

I am migrating my site into php mysqli from php mysql_* methods.

I had following code that did the job:

mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_unicode_ci'");

Without this query my string characters (in Georgian language) were written with question marks. For example it was written ????????? instead of ?????????

So since it did its job I was happy, but now I cannot do the same with mysqli.

$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "root", "", "test");
$mysqli->query("SET NAMES 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_unicode_ci'");

Can anyone please help me out? Thanks.

Answer 1

It is not recommended to use mysqli query in order to set names but rather mysqli::set_charset

$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "root", "", "test");
$mysqli->set_charset("utf8");